An editor embarking on the publication of a collection of letters begins by cataloguing the available material. Utilising electronic resources to create and maintain the catalogue can provide real benefits to the editor by simplifying certain essential tasks. The Centre is in the process of developing a model for such catalogues, which will be supported by documentation and tools to assist editors of collections of early modern letters. The catalogues produced will:
Download Example: The Correspondence of Sir Simon Archer (PDF)
The CELL model is based on the idea of creating an electronic cardfile. It will address a number of difficulties inherent in the cataloguing of letter collections. It will establish standards for handling:
It will also facilitate the dissemination of catalogues in forms appropriate to different contexts. A relational model is considered to be the most appropriate and efficient for such catalogues, but tools will be provided for export to HTML or to XML with an appropriate XML Schema or DTD as required. It will be possible to export the entire catalogue or a selection of the records held. Researchers will be able to extract selections of letters by combinations of various criteria, including:
An information retrieval strategy will be developed based upon a concept hierarchy, which is more flexible and responsive to the needs of researchers than conventional classification by keywords. The concept hierarchy will be shared across projects and this website will provide a single interface for interrogating all catalogues conforming to the model.
Our prototype takes its initial data from the catalogue produced by the Francis Bacon Correspondence Project under the direction of Alan Stewart. The resultant database will be used by Alan in the production of a new critical edition of the correspondence.